Amazon Echo is becoming the shopping aid it was meant to be
Amazon has released a firmware update for its promising but somewhat hard-to-come by Echo speaker-slash-personal-assistant that integrates the obvious; home shopping.
A SlashGear report shed light on the new functionality, which is designed to enable users of the $199 (around £130) speaker unit to re-order items from previous online shopping ventures.
So, for example, if you wish to have more beef jerky delivered (who doesn’t?), you can utter the voice command: “Alexa, re-order beef jerky.”
Regardless of the command, Echo will convey a message to your Amazon account, which will search your previously ordered items, find the requested product, remind you of the price and ask you to confirm the order.
This is all dependent on you having a Prime subscription and the item being Prime eligible, of course, but it’s definitely a start.
Since Amazon released the Echo with a controlled rollout late last year, the company has pitched it more like Siri-style physical product that can answer any question you might have.
Those with the gadget can also request music to be played from the Amazon Prime streaming service, start Spotify playlists on demand and even offer news bulletins when it hears that wake world.
Read more: Amazon Echo is the personal assistant we’ve all been waiting for
An expansion into shopping for Echo not only makes sense, we can only assume that was the purpose all along. Amazon also recently launched Dash Buttons to allow shoppers to reorder favourite items from selected brands with just a single touch.
You can learn about Amazon Echo in the video below.
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